If Only 1/10?
Media: Fic
Title: If Only 1/10?
Rating: This one might be R for like the shortest, slightly-graphic scene of all time? Mild swearing. (The whole fic will be NC-17)
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine, a blink and you miss it Blaine/Sebastian and Kurt/OMC. Others might appear but this is mostly about Kurt/Blaine
Spoilers (if any): Mentions of anything that happened to Klaine up until the present
Word Count: 5,903 (this part)
Summary: "Have you ever done something so terrible that you'd give anything in the world to put it right?"
Author’s Note (if any): I'm a total cliche' and I don't even care. I love movies that include time travel and magic, especially RomComs. I've had this idea bouncing in my head ever since I began reading "Someone Like You" by klaineaddict. It's about 8,000 times better than this and it's a WIP, but I highly recommend it to anyone who likes well-written Klaine.
I don't have a beta, so if you're willing to offer yourself up on the sacrificial altar to tell me how to word things better or to suggest any ideas, I'd love that.
I didn't think I should put it in the warnings, but there's a cheating storyline and I know a lot of people can get affected by that, so here's your warning for that.
I also have no idea what genre this is. The first chapter could be considered angst, but it's not THAT angsty. It's meant to be a romantic comedy, so I'm going with romance and angst. Eventually it's going to be an AU with a non-AU back story? I'm confusing myself here. Magic is confusing.
Chapter One
Blaine's drunk.
Extremely, completely, lost in translation, drunk.
He's holding his wallet in his hands. A few twenties are stuffed inside, the top of his platinum and other credit cards are peeking out behind his driver's license. A voice in his head says he shouldn't be showing these things in a public bar while surrounded by people who might mug him or god knows what. Another voice says he hopes that it happens. Maybe he'll stumble out of this bar and some crazy drug fiend will stab him and take his money. He wants to die but doesn't have the nerve to ever kill himself.
Not only is he a coward, but he doesn't deserve to die. He deserves to spend years walking this miserable planet, alone and suffering. It's what he wants.
Instead, he focuses on his conversation with a bartender. She has a short, Velma Kelly-esque bob but in fiery, clearly-from-the-bottle red. Her nose and eyebrow are pierced and she seems wild and punky, but her eyes are caring and sympathetic. She's an excellent bartender.
Blaine pulls a photo out that's been folded in half and tucked into one of the sleeves of his wallet. The folds have been creased so many times that there are lines in the image now, but he's not worried. He'll print it out again on expensive, high-quality gloss paper as he's done every few months when it starts to fall apart. "My ex-boyfriend. He's getting married today." He checks the clock over her shoulder and corrects himself. "Got married today."
The picture's of the two of them from college. He knows the details so well. He knows how long and curly his hair had gotten. He knows how many days he'd gone without shaving. He can remember with crystal clarity how Kurt's t-shirt had been the softest cotton can be when it's brand-new and hasn't been washed yet. He remembers the teeth of Kurt's leather jacket biting into his hand and it only made him clutch harder because he wanted that pain. He wanted to mark himself as Kurt's so he could never forget it when they were apart. Whenever he looks at the picture, he looks at his hand and always expects to see the imprints of the zipper still there, but they're gone with his hair. As soon as it had ended, Blaine had shaved it- barely a half-inch short now- and keeps it that way.
There's a man at the piano that starts playing an old-fashioned song and a larger guy starts singing. He reminds Blaine of Penn from Penn and Teller. He doesn't care as the few other customers join in on the song.
Once upon a time there was a tavern,
Where we used to raise a glass or two.
Remember how we laughed away the hours,
Think of all the great things we would do.
"We were together for six years and six days."
The bartender pauses in her drink-mixing to lean over the counter and look at the picture. "He's gorgeous."
"Yeah, isn't he? And I'm madly in love with him." Blaine's at that level of drunk where he's sentimental and emotional and over-sharing. He stands the picture up on the bar, the fold allowing it to stay vertical on its own, and finishes his double-shot of scotch in one big gulp. The bartender whisks away the empty glass and fills it again. "He left me 10 months ago."
Blaine licks his finger and runs it around the rim of his glass. A quiet harmonic noise emits from the gesture, but he has to strain to hear it over the din of the sing-along.
Those were the days my friend,
We thought they'd never end,
We'd sing and dance for ever and a day,
We'd live the life we choose,
We'd fight and never lose,
For we were young and sure to have our way.
The redhead goes and takes other people's empty glasses but never travels too far from him. He's not sure whether it's because she cares what she has to say, or whether he's the hardest luck case she has to deal with, or if he just picked the perfect spot at the bar because this is where she does all of her drink mixing.
He doesn't really care.
Still staring at the amber liquid, Blaine continues, "Have you ever done something so terrible that you'd give anything in the world to put it right?"
Pocketing the money for a set of pina coladas, Red (as he's come to call her in his head) leans over the bar and tilts her head. She looks at him like she knows him. Maybe she's just seen this sort of thing a million times before. "You're drinking from a guilty conscience because you still love him."
Blaine has to laugh at that, sipping at his scotch now that his world's started to spin a little more than it should. "You don't drink from a guilty conscience after like eight months."
"I'm just... What's the saying? Two wrongs don't make a right?" Blaine rolls his eyes and doesn't look like he's going to stop drinking anytime soon, so she moves on the conversation. "So what stopped you two from getting back together then?"
Blaine sets his elbow on the bar and leans his chin on his palm. The voices in his head continue to make commentary that he can't control. They wonder whether his head would fall off if his hand weren't holding it up. "Besides the fact that he's getting married- gotten married- today? To some- some asshole that he met at Wal-mart. At fucking Wal-mart. Can you imagine MARRYING someone that you met at WAL-MART?"
Red tucks her hair behind her ear, laughing a little at the idea of it. She's a professional, done this long enough that she knows not to comment but to keep asking questions. Blaine thinks he's going to give her a huge tip. "Where did he first meet you then?"
He gets wistful, smiles authentically for the first time in god knows how long as he remembers it. "High school. On the staircase. He went to another school and we were in competing show choirs. He came to spy." The whole story is like a gay fairy tale and they're both smiling now.
He finishes his shot and- instead of topping him off- Red pops off the top of a dark brown bottle. She's weaning him onto beer and hopes he doesn't notice that this is her good will gesture for the month. "So what kind of person do you meet on the show choir competition circuit?"
She's asking him about Kurt, but Blaine gestures to himself. "A narcissist with low self-esteem. A wannabe songwriter who squanders his parents' dreams to fucking fall flat on his face."
At this point, he's so drunk that he doesn't give a fuck about anything anymore. He doesn't question the move from scotch to beer. He doesn't question how sarcastic her words sound when she says, "A songwriter? Wow."
"Unemployed songwriter."
"Really? I'm surprised. I mean about the unemployed part. You've got a nice voice. Very expressive and charming and completely adorable. I can spot an adorable gay from a mile away, so I would know."
Blaine feels complimented by her words and it kind of lightens the burden of existence, if only slightly. He's always felt better being liked and it's been a long time since he's had a fan. "Apparently I don't have an adorable personality anymore. It was better when I did Disney covers, but now it's all depressing shit and I start crying and-"
Behind him, the bar's singing together like they're old friends. Red sees she's taking him down a dark path with this line of conversation and tries to steer their conversation back to the reason he's drinking. "Did you cry a lot with him?"
Just tonight I stood before the tavern,
Nothing seemed the way it used to be.
In the glass I saw a strange reflection,
Was that lonely soldier really me?
Blaine's thumbnail picks at the label of the beer bottle and he's glad to have something to do with his hands. He needs to talk to someone and he's glad he chose this bar with this nice girl who seems to want to hear his story. Still, it's clear that she doesn't have a clue what love is because he shakes his head and the left side of his mouth quirks into a self-deprecating grin. "No. We had something... really special, you know?"
At that, her hands go to open another beer. It's not for him, it's for herself. The man behind the piano- the non-descript man in black sunglasses in a dark bar in the middle of the night- glances over. His fingers hit a note a little too soft and then a little too hard, but he finds his way back again.
Red has her own demons.
"Yeah. Something special. Why do we always think we found something special? Something unrepeatable! Your one and only true love! And you always wind up telling the same old story..." She's sarcastic, a little angry but covering it with cynicism now because it's better to laugh at love than it is say it beat you. "So... did you at least have the guts to tell him, or did he find out?"
Red's a fucking mind reader or something.
Blaine doesn't even remember mentioning it. He feels like he must have, but doesn't really care to think about it. All he wants to think about is this pain that he's going through and sharing the burden of it. He doesn't care that Red's sympathetic and drinking with him now. He just cares about his story.
"No, I told him. I'd been seeing this guy, Sebastian, who went to my old high school- who I thought I'd fallen in love with." His fingers started to shake just enough that he knocked over his beer bottle. He shoved the stool away from the bar to get away from the spill and Red quickly grabbed a towel to wipe it up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The fingers of Sebastian's left hand were curled into his very short hair, the shortest he'd ever had it, and they're holding his head so far back that he was staring at the ceiling. Every time the taller boy pounded into him, Blaine's body shoved into the dresser. The bottles of alcohol that rested on top of the piece of furniture clinked together, fell over, rolled off.
His neck was starting to get sore. Blaine knew his hips would definitely be bruised by Sebastian's fingertips digging into his pelvis as he pulled Blaine back and speared into him. Part of him couldn't stop thinking that this kind of sex was so new and vital, passionate and exciting, and it seemed to be filling up this hole he had in his soul. Another part was wondering how he could keep Kurt from seeing him naked until the marks faded.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The whole time we were together, I was half with him and half thinking about Kurt. I just- By the time I left his place to head back home, I was in this fucked up frame of mind. And, of course, it was fucking St. Patrick's Day. If there's one fucking thing I hate about New York, it's the parades. Especially the fucking drunken ones."
He remembers the loud screeching of bagpipes and the temple-bursting drum beats, vuvuzelas going off in his face, the smell and sight of vomit, green-toothed smiles.
"It's just- It's mayhem. You can't fucking breathe. You can't fucking move. You're never going to get a cab. But I'm working my way through, trying to get to the subway. And, at this point, I was thinking about what to tell Kurt in case he asked me where I'd been." Blaine tips back his beer and takes a long sip before setting it back down on the bar. "My head's pounding and I think I might've hallucinated because, all of a sudden, I see my friend David- who is notably black and NOT Irish- shouting to me from the crowd, 'Take something from his closet! A scarf or one of his gloves! Say I gave it to you!'"
He rolls his eyes at himself, looks up from his bottle of beer and sees Red's attention is 100% on him. It's like she's watching some nature special about the thinking habits of a cheater and she's fascinated.
So he continues, "Anyway, I finally get home and there he is."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kurt's sitting on their sofa. It's an old thing, resurrected from a dumpster behind a hotel that got foreclosed on or something. Kurt reupholstered it himself, made sure there were no bugs or mold, and he's proud to have brought something into their place that wasn't bought with Blaine's parents' money.
He's sitting there Indian-style in the middle, shoeboxes of photos on his left and right and a bunch in his lap. On the coffee table, there's leftover and re-heated Chinese food sitting next to Kurt's cell phone and the remotes for the TV.
Most of the time, Kurt comes in two forms. He's either on or off. When they're home by themselves, with no plans of company or going out, he's off. He's wearing one of Blaine's old Dalton gym t-shirts that he cut a boat-neck into and it's dangling off one shoulder. His pajamas bottoms are pin-striped and the faded blue's match each other. The fact that it's an entire outfit makes it seem like he's still trying, but Blaine knows for a fact that these are Kurt's comfy clothes. He feels like he should be salivating as he usually does when he gets to see Kurt's clavicle or the fine hairs on his shins, but his mouth is dry. He feels guilty instead.
"Hi."
Blaine drops his keys into a porcelain bowl by the door and they jingle and clang as they fall into the receptacle. When he speaks, he's too cheery as he tries to overcompensate for his real emotions. "Hey! How are you?!"
Looking Kurt in the eye while he's lying or hiding something is impossible for Blaine at this time. Instead he stares down at the floor, drops off his leather satchel by the couch, and walks immediately into their bedroom, hoping against hope that Kurt won't smell sex on him and he'll be able to take a shower.
"I was just talking to Rachel on the phone and she said she saw you today."
Pulling off his shirt and stuffing it into the bottom of the laundry hamper, Blaine schools his voice to remain even, "Really? Where?"
"Going into some apartment building."
"Uh-huh! Went over to David's this morning to help him out with some studying." He pulls off his belt and wiggles out of his jeans. He makes a mental note to text David to match his story if Kurt should check up on it.
"It wasn't David's street."
Blaine comes out of the back room, holding a towel around his waist. For some reason he thinks that being almost completely naked will make him seem like he's got nothing to hide. He even goes as far as to lean against the doorway in an attempt to look casual. "Right. It was at his new girlfriend's place."
"You weren't on your own." Kurt doesn't meet his eyes and keeps separating the pictures on his lap. Blaine can't tell if he's going by age or by the people in them, but he's not focusing on that right now.
"I know. I was with Sebastian. I bumped into him when I was walking down the street and invited him to join us."
Now Kurt looks up and Blaine nearly runs from the room before he has to look his boyfriend in the eyes. It's all about getting in the shower as fast as possible and he barely hears Kurt's respond sarcastically, "What a coincidence."
"Yeah! Isn't it?" He remembers Hallucination!Wes's advice and heads into the closet silently. After picking a scarf up from the far back of the closet- something he doesn't remember Kurt wearing in a while and hopes Kurt won't remember it either- Blaine balls the silk material up as small as he can make it and heads back out to the living room. He kneels down quickly to dig into his satchel as he attempts to smooth out the conversation, "Oh! Before I forget... David gave me this today and was wondering whether or not it might be yours? Maybe you left it at his place? I think it's one of yours."
It's a long silent moment where Kurt stares at the scarf in Blaine's hand and he watches Kurt with wide open eyes. He's standing at the edge of a cliff and waiting for some sort of acknowledgement that Kurt does or doesn't believe him.
After a few seconds that feel like hours, he finally reaches out with a long, pale hand to take it from him and grazes Blaine's much tanner wrist with his fingertips. Kurt holds his hand there for a moment, smiling in this sad way like when he remembers his mother or if the subject of coming out of the closet comes up. Bittersweet.
Swallowing, Kurt barely nods and pulls the material out of his hands and Blaine shivers as the silk passes through his fingers. "Yes. It's mine. I've been looking for it forever." He holds the scarf and wraps it around his palm a few times, staring at it, before letting out a long breath. He's suddenly filled with giddy energy and bounces on the couch once before he starts to pick up the photographs and put them back in their shoeboxes. "We should go out! Let's go out! How bad is it out there with the parade and all?"
"It's insane as it ever is. I hate it so much." Blaine presses a kiss to the top of Kurt's hair and heads back, still determined to shower before his smell of liarcheaterliarfailurewhore starts to seep into the apartment.
"Have you eaten?" Kurt shouts to the back and Blaine stares at himself in the mirror of the bathroom.
He's frowning, dead-looking, and as unemotional as he's ever seen his eyes- and yet his voice sounds normal as it ever has when he responds. "You really want to go out for lunch in that?"
"I haven't been out all day!"
"You can't move out there!"
"We can grind!"
Blaine laughs and pictures them pushing their way through the crowd, dancing along to the music and laughing at people rather than with them. Suddenly, more than anything, he wants to give in. He wants to sacrifice and do something he doesn't want to really do to make Kurt happy.
So, with a mock-retreat quality to his voice, he pretends that Kurt has beaten him into submission. "Alright, alright, we'll go!"
"Outstanding!" Kurt's voice is closer and Blaine looks away from the mirror to see him standing next to their bed and throwing outfit options onto it. Their bed.
Blaine's in the clear. He's gotten away with it. He won't have to lie again. David will cover for him if he gets asked about it and it's just... over. Kurt believes him. They're supposed to move on. But suddenly Blaine feels like he's been punched in the stomach and he can't stop the words 'their bed' from repeating on a loop in his mind. His eyes well up with tears and his chin is trembling. He's standing in the doorway, clutching onto the sides so hard that he's afraid he's going to either rip the molding off or break his fingers.
Kurt picks up a jacket, holds it up against himself and takes it back to the closet and doesn't even notice that Blaine's hyperventilating until his shaking voice fills the room.
"Kurt-"
"I'll be ready by the time you're done in the shower. Don't worry."
"It wasn't David's girlfriend's apartment. I didn't just happen to run into Sebastian."
He can imagine more than actually see every muscle in Kurt's body tense. It starts off slow as he peeks his head out of the closet and asks quietly, "What?" It's like he wants to still believe that he heard wrong. But no matter how much Blaine had barely gotten the words out, they were clear and unavoidable. When Kurt speaks again, it's in a resigned sigh, an exhale of words. "Why didn't you just keep lying?"
Blaine has to look away at that, at the utter forfeit in Kurt's face. He's not as angry or as sad as Blaine thought he'd be. It's his bittersweet face, but taken to a whole new extreme level where he's smiling as if he always knew the world was going to turn out this way.
"You were doing really well."
Another invisible punch to Blaine's gut. It was true. He'd gotten away with it. Maybe he never should have admitted it.
"Do you love him?"
"Yes," Blaine confesses. Sebastian was so unlike Kurt. Sebastian was shiny and new and hard and sharp. Kurt was old and familiar and comfortable and that was no reason to stay with someone.
There was barely a pause after that before Kurt screamed- a high-pitched animalistic wail, really- and swept countless glass bottles of colognes and moisturizers off of his vanity. Blaine flinched as they crashed onto the floor, shattering on impact. He took three long strides to Blaine and grabbed him by his upper arms. His nails scratched into his skin as he dug his fingers in and pulled Blaine out of the bathroom and nearly threw him into the living room. Kurt was taller than Blaine but much lighter, so the whole gesture was full more of awkward shoving than a display of strength. If it had been more violent, it would've been satisfying in some way. If it had been less, it wouldn't have been quite such a heart-breakingly desperate symbol of 'I need you gone.'
Kurt slammed the door to their bedroom and Blaine only had the sounds of the damage to figure out what was going inside. He tried the knob- locked- and then banged on the door as he begged, "I'm sorry-"
He knew Kurt couldn't hear him though, over the sound of him muttering/shouting nearly incoherently, "HOW LONG-? FUCK YOU! HOW LONG DID-? FUCK-" and the noise of his guitar being destroyed. He'd never heard, never seen Kurt act like this and Blaine suddenly wanted to do it over. He wanted to bring the lie back and live in that world where they were both pretending everything was all right.
Instead he felt two hot tears drip from his eyes. He'd honestly expected more. Instead, he just felt this weird sensation of his throat hurting, of tears and sobs that just couldn't break the surface, and he turned his back to the bedroom door and slid down against it.
Inside the bedroom, Kurt was surrounded in devastation- pieces of guitar and torn sheet music and broken glass. He wanted to go out into the living room and hit Blaine, talk to him, yell at him. He wanted to do something TO Blaine. Instead, he slapped his hand against the wood of the door and let out a sobbing scream as he focused on the fact that he wasn't ready for Blaine to be in love with someone else. He'd always suspected the world to kick him in the ass, but the pessimism still hadn't prepared him for how much it would hurt.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Blaine's arms were crossed on the bar, his head resting against them. His breath fogged up the heavily-varnished wood. Now he could cry every day- a full ugly cry that he could feel in his chest. It made his nose run and body shake as he sobbed.
Liquor helped.
He murmured into the wood, almost forgetting that Red was there listening, "It was the most horrible day of my life."
"So what happened with the other guy?"
Lifting his head up, Blaine wiped his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his old, dirty leather jacket. He didn't give a shit about this part of the story. The words tumbled out of his mouth, and he shrugged them off. "I don't know. We just kind of fizzled out. I woke up one day next to him and I looked down and I thought, 'I don't love you.'"
Red chuckled knowingly but didn't say a word. Instead she just nodded as a few of her regulars headed out of the bar and glanced over at the pianist who wore sunglasses at night.
"Strange, isn't it? How the light just changes sometimes?" He shook his head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs from his mind, or maybe chase away a thought he wasn't ready to handle. "I tried to go back to him.” Blaine felt the need to amend his words, clarify who he went back to, "To Kurt. But it was too late."
Another nod from Red as her eyes never left the pianist, "The light had changed for him, too."
Blaine was oblivious to her own inner dynamics. He was merely glad to have someone to listen to him. He sighed and tipped the brown bottle of beer back again, taking down the last swallows. "Yeah. If only I could go back, you know?"
The bar was nearly empty. It was already past 3 am and Blaine knew he'd had enough. His body was physically sore from the amount of alcohol he'd drank, rather than pleasantly dizzy and light. He'd hit his limit.
Standing up, Blaine wobbled a little on his feet before balancing his hip on the stool and picking a few twenties from his wallet to push into the pitcher of tips at the end of the bar. "Thank you, Red. See ya."
"Take care, Blainers."
Outside, Blaine weaved back and forth on the sidewalk as he tried to conquer the few blocks to his apartment. Every time he went off towards the street, he course-corrected; but then he was nearly running into the stoop of some building.
It was so late- still dark out even- but the garbage men were already starting to make their rounds. Tripping over his own feet, Blaine collapsed into a pile of garbage bags and laughed, full-body laughed until his sides aches. He laid there until a young, Spanish guy was standing over him.
"I feel like shit," Blaine announced.
The Spanish guy crossed his arms over his jumpsuit, "Me too. I had a long day." He picked up one of the bags of garbage and threw it into the back of the vehicle nearby.
"Can't you just throw me in your truck?"
"Senor! I think we have a problem here!"
Blaine waved to the older Spanish man who got out of the driver's seat of the garbage truck. "That would be me, Senor."
"He wants me to throw him in the truck!"
Blaine nodded and sprawled out amongst the bags, "Because I am trash."
"I think he's drunk."
The other man was much older, possibly the younger's father. He bent over Blaine until he was inches away and his face filled Blaine's tunnel vision. He wore a bowler hat, had a mustache, and his wrinkled eyes searched Blaine's for a moment before he shook his head. "Wrong, Raphael. Wrong. This poor man is deluded. And it is no fault of his." He took Blaine's arm and pulled. Raphael took the other to help the older man lift Blaine out of the trash. "No, no. This poor man needs our help."
Before he knew it, Blaine was stood up and hoisted onto the back of the truck. The world tilted as Raphael wrapped his fingers around the handle on the back and the truck lurched forward onto the road. The jarring motion nearly caused him to fall off, but Raphael grabbed Blaine's jacket and kept him steady.
An hour or so later found Blaine at the Staten Island dump. It smelled awful and made him nauseous, but he focused on putting one foot in front of the other as he followed in the footsteps of his two new friends.
Drinking always helps in making the most interesting of compatriots.
They took a winding path through the large hills of various garbage. Here and there Blaine saw bottles on the ground, a few broken dolls, bits of food and take out containers. Eventually the area opened up into some sort of "not-so-bad" trash area. Old refrigerators were stacked on top of each other and Raphael climbed them nimbly until he reached the top of Appliance Mountain. He opened the door of the refrigerator that was king of the heap and the light from it filled the area for a moment while Raphael picked out a bottle of red wine.
Blaine collapsed onto an old couch, the springs digging into his ass and thighs but he was too numb to care. He gratefully accepted the glass of wine when it was handed to him and he suddenly felt like he was at one of his family's dinner parties. "Where are we?"
The Senor gestured to the area around him. "The things you throw away. The things you did not want anymore. The things you were desirous to forget. The things that did not fit in your saddle bag. And the things you lost, too... It all ends up here."
"What?" Blaine's head was spinning worse by the minute and he felt like his two new friends were trying to confuse him. He scooted down to the end of the couch and looked through a dirty and old bookcase that sat next to it. "How can people throw things like this away? Books. How can people throw away books?" Blaine grabbed an old leather-bound notebook off the shelf and opened it, realizing that this was someone's journal. He wondered what would cause a history of someone's life to be thrown in the garbage. Maybe it belonged to an old man who died and their family didn't care to keep it. Maybe it was a young girl's who decided it was full of memories that they didn't want anymore.
Raphael laughed as he leaned back in a recliner. He crossed his legs at the ankle and took a drink from his own glass. "That I can understand. Of course, I can't read or write in English. But books are the reason why people end up in jails and not castles, Don Miguel."
Don Miguel kicked down the footrest of the recliner as he walked past and stood in front of Blaine. He looked down at the drunken sot instead of at his friend that he was speaking to. "If you read books, friend Raphael, perhaps a great deal more would fit in your pocket."
The younger Spaniard was at Don Miguel's side immediately and Blaine's head lolled on the back of the couch, drunk and dizzy, as he stared up at them. Again he was hoisted up by his arm, his wine sloshing onto his jacket sleeve as he found his balance to stand upright. "But for our new friend and myself, the future is an even bigger pocket. And he cannot see what it contains."
Don Miguel took the journal out of Blaine's fingers, nearly having to bend them back in order to release his grip on the item. "You are evading the issue, Raphael. Our friend here is enchanted. For he sees no life without his prince, now that he is marrying another knight."
Blaine felt his center of gravity shift and he started to tip over as he wondered, 'How did they know?' He was positive he hadn't gotten to tell them his story just yet. Raphael hugged him to his side, an arm wrapped around Blaine's shoulders as the older man led the way to a large puddle.
"And we need to disenchant him."
Their footsteps splashed water and Blaine could feel it seeping into his shoes, his socks, as they stood nearly ankle-deep in the puddle. "But it did not work with Michelangelo, Don Miguel."
Again the voices in his head argued. Sensibility complained about the idea of his feet being in garbage water. Depression hoped there were some infected syringes hidden in the murky brown depths that he could step on.
"Ah, but that was an exception. This time, it shall work. Shall we?" Don Miguel handed the journal to Raphael and took off his hat. He looked down into it for a moment and pulled out a small slip of paper. "Not half as good as the Masters', but it will do."
The world started to move under his feet. Blaine wasn't sure if he was making it up- if it was the confusion of an intoxicated man- but it seemed different than usual dizziness. It felt like the earth actually was tilting away from him.
Don Miguel took the wine glasses away from him, put his thumb in it and pressed the digit to Blaine's eyelids. "From this world of worried flesh, eyes look your last." The wet finger touched the backs of his hands. "Arms, take your last embrace." The glass was held up to his mouth and he drank barely a sip before it was pulled away. "And lips... Oh, you, the doors of breath. Seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain." Don Miguel threw the glass over his shoulder and Blaine heard it shatter in the distance. His eyes were closed as he Don Miguel nodded to Raphael, "You know what to do."
Underneath his feet, the puddle of water soaked into the ground below him and left the dirt dry as if it had never rained that day. Blaine's eyes blinked dumbly at the sight. Suddenly darkness was upon him when Raphael pulled a soft material over his eyes and tied it so tight that it felt like a clamp being placed over his head. He began to mutter, "Waitwaitwaitwait, hang on. I was only joking. I didn't-"
No matter how much he struggled, Don Miguel held his arms in a firm but kind grip. Blaine knew he'd be on the ground if it weren't for those hands holding him up. Raphael tightened and double knotted the blindfold behind him and patted his back, "Now... Okay, okay, okay. It says here, if you wear this... you will never seen us. Otherwise, you will break the spell."
Don Miguel spun Blaine in a counter-clockwise motion, slowly at first but then faster and faster. He vaguely heard the sound of paper being torn and Don Miguel's hands released him. Still, Blaine kept twirling. His arms lifted up and out to the sides and he knew he couldn't stop the spin if his life depended on it. "Your heart is the kind tangled in a tree. Go and disentangle it."
Blaine was in the dark, the pitch black, and he felt wind rushing around him. He felt like he was flying and going deeper into the ground all at once. He wanted to throw up, but he couldn't stop. The voices of his two Spanish friends chuckled and their conversation sounded like it was getting farther and farther away
"Have you sent the page, Raphael?"
"First class! He will get it tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? Tomorrow will be a long time for him."
To Be Continued...
The picture:
